When selecting projects and activities to ignite the passion for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), the most effective methodologies include hands-on activities and projects and real-world scenarios.

One of Curriki’s content partners, Chevron, has brought together some of the best education programs focusing on improving instruction in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and on helping to provide the career and technical training that can lead to well‑paying jobs.

The LinkEngineering website is an online community of educators interested in providing meaningful engineering experiences to PreK-12 students of all abilities. LinkEngineering is a community of educators working with PreK-12 students in classrooms or other settings.

Digital fabrication has the potential to transform k-12 education. With the SCOPES-DF project, the Fab Foundation is bringing together fabbers, makers, and educators to deepen our understanding of the “what”, “how” and “why” of STEM disciplines. SCOPES-DF is the first project of its kind to specifically develop effective pathways and resources for using digital fabrication in STEM education. SCOPES-DF offers educators new models and methods for teaching. It offers students relevant, engaging, applied learning opportunities.

Engineer Girl provides access to role models, examples of engineering achievements and possibilities, along with advice on preparing for engineering careers. But more than that, we share stories about how engineering is essential to our lives and how an engineering career provides a unique opportunity to make a difference.

Dig into these incredible resources and your students won’t be able to resist the exhilaration of STEM.

We are all aware that STEM-related (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) jobs are among the best jobs available in our technologically advanced society. STEM education at some level, a basic understanding of STEM topics, is now necessary just to be part of modern society.

When the Washington Post’s Nick Anderson asked an expert panel what grade the U.S. should get for results in K-12 STEM education, the responses varied from A to F.

A deputy secretary from the Department of Education, John King, stated “In some places we should get an A, and in some places we should get a D.”

Students in the best school districts are performing well and the best of them are winning awards in science, math and technology competitions and entering into the world’s best universities. But he noted that many schools “don’t even offer Algebra 2”, including many schools with predominantly African-American students.

The Department of Education’s “First in the World” grant program is supporting an increase in the enrollment of minority and economically disadvantaged students in STEM majors in college. The Department is pushing for increased funding.

The chancellor of the District of Columbia public schools said it’s too early for a grade, that their effort to enhance STEM education is too recent.

In the D.C. public schools they have a Cornerstones initiative to get more high-quality cross-curricular lessons, including STEM, in use in their classrooms. Lessons are now more oriented toward inquiry and hands-on learning methodologies. The D.C. schools are shifting more to content expertise.

“Anchored by high-impact content-specific instructional models, such as close reading, inquiry-based math, … novel study and research projects, Cornerstones tasks will lead to a variety of meaningful student work products such as essays, oral presentations, musical pieces or art products.” – Cornerstones initiative web site

Curriki very much supports this kind of approach, and we hope that the D.C. public school system will take advantage of the tens of thousands of STEM resources freely available at welcome.curriki.org. These include full standards-compliant and project-based learning-oriented courses in algebra, geometry, and calculus.

As we know the biggest challenge for many students is mathematics, which underpins everything in STEM fields. If a student can master the math, then many avenues in STEM open up to him or her.

Curriki is here to support better student outcomes in STEM and in other fields, in the U.S., and around the globe through open educational resources, freely and widely available.

Curriki was very pleased to be in attendance on March 9th when UNESCO’s Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education unveiled their report on girls and women in STEM fields, at the Bangkok Science Center for Education in Thailand.

Titled “A Complex Formula: Girls and Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Asia”, the report examines the status of girls studying math, science and engineering subjects in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education, and the current state of employment for women in STEM fields. The report was based on in-depth country studies from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, the Republic of Korea and Viet Nam, in conjunction with other statistics from the region. The full 122-page report is freely available here on the UNESCO Bangkok web site.

Key Findings

The highest level message of the report is that “early and targeted intervention through education can greatly facilitate girls’ and women’s increased participation in STEM fields”.

While there are a number of interesting variations among the 7 countries studied, substantial consistency was found across a number of key findings.

Overall there is a shortage of talent on STEM fields in the Asia-Pacific region.

Globally, fewer than 30% of STEM researchers are women.

Gender differences in STEM topics become especially apparent around age 15, during secondary school education.

The gender gap at the secondary level correlates with under-representation of women in STEM during higher education and in the workforce.

Within the STEM fields, both in higher education and in the workforce, women tend to be found primarily in biology, chemistry and medicine.

Women are very lightly represented in physics, engineering and computer science/IT.

These latter fields are more math-intensive, and in school girls report more anxiety around, and lower interest levels in, mathematics.

There are fewer female teachers in STEM, implying fewer role models for girls.

Gender stereotypes are widespread in teaching and learning materials for STEM subjects.

Recommendations

A few of the recommendations from the report are:

“Teacher education and policies on recruitment must ensure a fair representation of both male and female teachers in all subjects, including mathematics and science, at all levels if education.

Teacher education… should be transformed to ensure that teachers are trained in gender-responsive teaching strategies.

Promoting more female role models in STEM, whether female teachers…female students and faculty members in higher education, and more broadly more women working in STEM fields, is an important strategy.

Curricula and learning materials should undergo further rigorous review from a gender perspective to ensure that they do not perpetuate gender stereotypes.”

Curriki is particularly interested in the last of these recommendations. We have tens of thousands of STEM materials at library.curriki.org, available for free, to support STEM education for girls and boys in Asia and around the world. We encourage you to upload STEM materials onto the Curriki web site, especially those that show equal participation of girls and boys in STEM learning roles, across the various disciplines, and that reflect both men and women as role models, equally. If you have such materials to upload, Curriki and our large, global educator and learner community will be most appreciative.

Even when girls and boys demonstrate similar actual competence levels in math, during the early school years, boys are more confident about their math skills. Already by kindergarten, boys have more interest in pursuing math learning than do girls.

STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) related jobs are some of the best jobs out there, and increasingly important in our technology-driven economy. But the percentage of women in many STEM jobs remains very low. Only about 1/4 of STEM jobs in the U.S. are filled by women. Women’s share of computer jobs has actually been falling in recent years. At present, only 18% of U.S. computer science majors are women.

According to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, women in STEM professions earn 33% more than those in other fields.

It’s generally understood that by school age, girls receive less encouragement in math and science pursuits than do boys, from both parents and teachers. What’s interesting is that it now seems this bias starts from a very early age, less than the age of 2 years!

In a study entitled “Gender Biases in Early Number Exposure to Preschool-Aged Children”, published in 2011 in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, researchers at the University of Delaware found that mothers spent fully twice as much time talking to their sons about numbers and numeric concepts as they did with their daughters! The average age of the children in the study was only 22 months, for both the boys and the girls.

Here’s a related set of resources on Curriki – Math for Girls. This link includes a series of videos featuring women working in mathematics and presenting pieces of math that excited them when they were in middle and high school.

Help girls realize that math and sciences education is not just for the boys. Even if they don’t end up pursuing STEM careers, there is a lot of useful and interesting knowledge to be gained in studying math, science and engineering topics. The use of math in traditionally non-STEM careers, such as finance and marketing, is only increasing. And maybe they are better at math than they think they are!